


“Lost and Unloved Things,” Huh?

by thatsrightdollface



Series: Seven Worlds (Crossovers for the Umbrella Academy Team) [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Loki is impressed by Allison, Luther is forced to fight in the Contest of Champions, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Sakaar (Marvel), also... lost in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26740822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Luther Hargreeves knew exactly what he would’ve written about Sakaar, if he were still filing those meticulous “Report Back to Base and Update Us About Your Mission, Spaceboy!” logs.  Like he used to, way long ago when he thought somebody was actually reading ‘em.Thor Ragnarok crossover.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Series: Seven Worlds (Crossovers for the Umbrella Academy Team) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907311
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	“Lost and Unloved Things,” Huh?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!!! Thank you for reading. :D I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made/anything I could've gotten wrong. I hope you're staying safe and doing as well as possible!!!
> 
> A couple things:
> 
> 1\. I quote the speech Thor hears in "Thor Ragnarok," when he's being presented to the Grandmaster, here.  
> 2\. Won't Loki be shocked when it turns out Thor actually gets transported to Sakaar, too, just a couple weeks later?!!?! Injustice.  
> 3\. Also, and I'm coming back to edit this in 'cause I regret not saying it -- happy birthday to the Hargreeves-es!!! Yay!!! :')
> 
> Thank you!

Luther Hargreeves knew exactly what he would’ve written about Sakaar, if he were still filing those meticulous _“Report Back to Base and Update Us About Your Mission, Spaceboy!”_ logs. Like he used to, way long ago when he thought somebody was actually reading ‘em. That felt... naive... now, of course. Felt like a ragged hole opened up in Luther’s lungs so that his breath caught, a wheezing balloon; felt like a stone sinking deeper and deeper in his stomach, like it could sink forever and never finish falling. 

Nobody had been reading Spaceboy’s logs — it felt obvious, now — but Luther filled them out anyway, for years and years and years. He’d charged steadily forward on this useless mission through the cosmos, diligently scribbling sketches of sentient asteroid belts and taking chemical readings of stuff out so far past his homeworld. His ship had been rattling with sample jars, by the end of things. Every pebble labeled, every day accounted for. But even so, he’d learned the truth. His brother Diego had busted into Dad’s lab and sent him video evidence. All those unopened reports; all those untested samples; all that wasted time. 

“Dad tricked you, bro,” Diego said, in the video, face up close to the screen. Camera hand shaking. At first Luther had thought he was gloating, like he used to when Luther failed an assignment or got in trouble when they were kids — sprinkling salt in the wound, smirk so knowing and familiar — but sometimes he wondered. What had Diego been doing around Dad’s lab, anyway? Was that actually infuriating triumph in his voice, or something more complicated? “It was pointless. This ‘mission’ you’re on... he made it up to get you outta the house. I still don’t know _why_ , but I’m looking into it —”

And that was where Luther cut Diego’s video off, every time he’d watched it. See, he thought he knew exactly why Dad would’ve wanted to get him out of the house, send him away forever. Never look him in the eyes again. There had been an accident, something Diego’d never been briefed about. Luther died on a different mission — a _real_ mission — for Dad, and he’d been brought back changed. Luther didn’t like thinking about Diego looking at him with pity, now, like a broken toy collecting dust in some mildewy garage. Or... worse... sounding triumphant, again. Like, _“Dad never cared about any of us. Of course this would happen. Of course you should’ve gotten out while you still could. Like I did, like everyone else did. I mean, man... you were the last one left. What the hell, Luther?”_

Luther’s DNA had been fused with an alien gorilla’s, that time he’d died, and his bones didn’t fit right anymore. His super-strength was... uh, it had always been difficult to control, sometimes, but things were on another level now. Luther’s shadow was a hulking thing. Enormous. It seemed even more like a stranger’s, once he knew the truth. Diego’s video had arrived, and his skin felt wrong and stretched all over, and he sent Dad a string of helpless messages in a row. He still flinched, remembering them. Asking for clarification about his mission. Requesting feedback about his performance. Begging — in a sloppy, typo-filled moment of weakness — to come home. 

Dad never replied, not to any of it. Luther had sort of known he wouldn’t. Diego was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. When the wormhole caught him... the wormhole that took Luther here, to Sakaar... he didn’t fight it. Not like he could have, if he’d thought there was something waiting for him on Earth. 

It had felt like closing his eyes and letting the punches come, if that made sense. Luther’s ship had been drowned in colors he hadn’t known to imagine, and hurtled around like it’d gotten caught in some merciless universal pinball machine. Everything was surrender and movement and the distant realization of pain. Luther would’ve expected to scream, but actually he was deathly quiet, mouth hanging open. He thought of Dad, and his brother Diego. Had Diego expected a response from him, when he sent that video evidence of his? Had Luther left him hanging, sort of how Dad kept him drifting like a mobile spinning around and around on the ceiling? A spaceship hung on a string, never actually going anywhere. 

Luther thought about Allison, too, during the crash. He didn’t mean to, but he’d been in love with Allison at least as long as Diego had been in love with the idea of being the people’s hero and owning a lot of interesting knives. Allison didn’t know about Luther’s accident, either. They’d already said goodbye, years ago. Luther could remember the face she’d made looking back over her shoulder at him — irritated, apologetic, brand-new wedding ring bright on her finger — and he held it in his head as Sakaar claimed him. 

Sakaar, surrounded by a ton of wormholes, constantly spitting cosmic trash right here, congealing and festering in this very spot. Sakaar, a dumping ground. Sakaar, with garbage heaps stretching the size of continents, priceless artifacts buried alongside alien fast-food leftovers. Societies had developed hidden among the sticky ruinous mountains. Luther‘s ship crumpled here, broken as so many ships had broken before, and by the time he shuddered awake scrappers had already harvested some of the most useful parts from his engine. The air smelled damp and thick, and just breathing made Luther’s head pound. The doors had been stolen, and a ton of his carefully-labeled research samples, too. Dammit, right?

Not like it especially mattered. Who would miss them?

Here were some facts about Sakaar — some of the shit Luther would’ve included in his daily mission reports, if he’d still been writing those. Alongside air temperature and humidity readings, naturally; alongside soil analyses and everything else.

  1. Sakaar was ruled by this ageless guy called the Grandmaster, who presided over plastic-y glitter cities carved out in the muck. He had an easy, sing-song voice and these sticks that could melt people who pissed him off into bubbling goo. Even after being on Sakaar much too long — longer than Luther had spent on any other planet in years — he still didn’t know any name for this man but that: “the Grandmaster.” It was the only name anyone needed to know for him. People learned enough from the lavish, horrifying parties he threw; the parades; the fireworks from his pleasure vessels. 



The Grandmaster... was a lot.

  1. As another example of the Grandmaster being “a lot”... the guy loved putting on coliseum-style murder games. The Contest of Champions, he called them. Sometimes he sent lackeys out to steal contestants for these games. They found people, like Luther, who’d be able to put on an interesting enough show, and they implanted electrified chips in their necks. Dragged them back to the Grandmaster’s plastic-y glitter cities. Offered them up for pay. 



“Aw, we’ve never seen a creature like _you_ before,” Luther remembered hearing, as his own chip clamped in. He remembered it like a dehydrated fever dream. How long had he been looking for water among the trash mountains? “Wow, wow, wow. People’re gonna get a real kick out of you!”

  1. Sakaar was a place built up of “lost and unloved things,” according to the intro speech Luther’d heard before getting presented to the Grandmaster. It was a shamelessly awestruck speech, and Luther had been strapped to an ominous prison chair at the time. 



“Lost and unloved things,” the intro speech said, “Like you.” Luther had been so dizzy, the words felt like they were coming from both inside his own skull and all around him. Words like stinking, perfumed air. Words like truth, like breathing. Was that how Dad would have described him? How about Diego? Not Allison, surely? 

Just like Luther’s super-strength, and the unquestioning truth that any knife Diego threw would hit its target… just like how all but one of the children Dad had gathered to train from around the world had _some_ kind of mysterious power… Allison had the ability to speak anything into being. She said, “I heard a rumor,” and whatever it was, obviously the rumor came true. She could unspeak these words, if she were here. Allison’s voice was stronger even than these words like air.

  1. “Lost and unloved things.”
  2. “Like you.”
  3. “Fear not,” the intro speech said, “For you are found. You are home, and there is no going back.”
  4. “Where once you were nothing, now you are something. You are the property of the Grandmaster. Congratulations!”



Luther could have carefully transcribed his experience in the Grandmaster’s self-proclaimed “Harlequinade,” if he’d wanted to. Other contestants told him their names, their stories, and he dutifully filed them away. Luther could’ve explained what it had been like, first stumbling out into the arena himself, shirtless and unprotected, theatrical paint smeared across one of his eyes and the announcer voice rattling through the stands. That crowd howling, feet thundering, dust kicked up everywhere, mixed in with flecks of glitter and bone. A planet of rage and pleasure, a planet of decadence and blood. Luther could have reported back on how it had felt to fight, with so many voices shrieking his stage name. He could have recorded his wins vs. his losses; he could have chronicled his escape attempts, hoping Dad would be proud of his resolve. His devotion.

He didn’t, though. Write any of it down, that is. Who would read it, even if he actually managed to get back to his ship and send anything? 

Luther saw himself projected in an enormous, crackling hologram over the Grandmaster’s cities, advertising the games. Blond hair fizzling with static, expression unreadable even to himself. He broke bones and got his own broken, and he helped patch up his fellow competitors’ wounds in the filthy labyrinth backstage. When people asked him if he had any family, he said, “Not on Sakaar.” Every day, the Grandmaster reminded him and all the rest of them that they had been found. That’s what Sakaar was for, wasn’t it? 

But when Luther was _actually_ found — found in the way that mattered — he knew it without having to be told. No intro speeches, no announcer voices. He knew it because... well... he was riling up the crowd like he’d been ordered to, snarling and demonstrating the power in his huge gorilla-arms, all that... and he caught a glimpse of someone familiar way up in one of the fanciest crystalline booths. This someone was leaning forward, a hand against the glass. Radiant ballgown shifting like aurora borealis. Stricken expression, and a stranger with slick dark hair and eyes like liquid poison on her arm. 

Luther choked, “Allison?” 

And then his opponent for the day, this cheerful Kronan called Korg whose hypothetical rebellion Luther had agreed to join, landed the first blow straight into the side of his jaw. Luther stumbled, wheeled his arm to punch back so he didn’t get a rattling shock in the neck. Korg was made of rock, sure, but pretty damn breakable rock all things considered. Luther never punched with his full strength, in a fight like this. 

He knew Allison, at least, would be able to tell. 

***

And what next? 

A solid question, honestly. 

It’d been a long time since Luther’s life had felt genuinely difficult to predict. The Contest of Champions was rigged often enough, truth be told. People the Grandmaster liked ended up winning, with their opponents electric-shocked into the dirt; that rusty backstage labyrinth stayed the same even as competitors were dragged beneath Sakaar in chains and then carried out on cheap stretchers once the show was over and all the fancy people had been shooed away. Sakaar was a stagnant, stunted place. _There’s_ something else for the status reports Luther would never write: Sakaar spun around in a circle, admiring its own reflection even as the floor rotted away beneath its metaphorical feet. 

But now, _Allison_ was here, and Luther felt her watching him, hairs prickling on the back of his neck, until suddenly she wasn’t. Until one of _so many possible things_ happened — until Allison and Diego (and _possibly_ a God of Mischief who’d been hurtled to Sakaar just recently, don’t ask, it had to do with a long-lost deathly sister and a broken hammer, all sorts of messy things, you know how it is) threw together the tricks that set all the stolen souls in the Contest of Champions free. 

Luther had no idea how the dominos would fall, of course, as he was fighting Korg in the ring, just like it was possible Loki didn’t know what the punchline to this particular joke would be yet. Maybe Loki just hitched his wagon to Allison’s star, tasting her power in the air and tilting his head to her, asking if she knew she could have made deities afraid if she wanted to; maybe he thought “What the hell,” the way Gods of Mischief sometimes do. Maybe he thought helping was the sort of thing his brother Thor might have done. 

Either way. 

Here’s what mattered, so far as Luther was concerned:

  1. By the end, Luther, Allison and Diego all got the hell out of there. Soon enough, Luther would learn about Allison’s divorce, and her daughter back on Earth, and how she’d agreed to come wandering out into the distant reaches of space with Diego in a shuttle they stole from Dad’s old arsenal like sneaking the family car out of a garage. 
  2. By that point, Allison would have spoken a rumor — and Luther would’ve been right, about her voice. More powerful than those voices like air; more powerful than Sakaar. And there were so many rumors Allison could have told! Her voice shook the coliseum, quaking with knowing and love and effort. Even the God of Mischief raised an eyebrow, watching her like one of his own. Lending her his magic. 
  3. _“I heard a rumor the Contest of Champions is over, and no one is bound here anymore.”_
  4. _“I heard a rumor everyone who wants to leave this place can walk away, now — there’s nothing anyone can do to stop us.”_
  5. _“Yes, that means you, too, Grandmaster.”_
  6. And the Grandmaster was powerless as his “champions” crowded into his pleasure cruisers and cargo ships and _left him there_. He whined and begged, maybe; his most loyal servants wrestled against their cosmic restraints, readying those weapons that could melt a person’s bones to goo. But Allison’s will held strong, and Loki helped gather everyone away, and Diego somehow hotwired _multiple_ alien spacecrafts. 
  7. There would be changes on Sakaar, likely as not, once anyone who wanted to leave could step away. Maybe Korg would print enough fliers to throw a successful revolution, this time. Maybe Loki considered sticking around Sakaar and trying to stir up some trouble, but he hesitated, remembering Asgard, remembering his brother, remembering broken promises and the way Thor claimed to have mourned him when he was pretending to be dead. 



Loki asked Allison if he could bum a ride back into familiar space, and Allison said, “Fine, but we’re getting Luther _quickly_. You take what you’ve got on you. And you’re going to be nice to him. Right?” 

“You didn’t even try to rumor me,” Loki drawled, offering a winning smile. “Aw. How considerate.”

“ _Right_ , trickster?”

“Mm. I suppose.” 

And there you go. 

Soon enough, Allison would pull Luther down into a tight, tender hug, holding him as if she was afraid he’d flicker away like the hologram advertisement version of himself hovering above the city. Luther would get dirt and blood on Allison’s Sakaar-style infiltration ball gown, and she would hold him closer. Diego would punch the air, hissing through his teeth that he knew it, he knew it, he knew it. 

Diego had _known_ Luther was still alive, somewhere, after all. Known he was lost, but not unloved; known he was gone, but not unreachable. Diego had realized the same thing about Dad’s other missing wards, too, mind you. They would have missions waiting for them when they got back to Earth – missions to bring everyone together again. That felt strange, of course. These were missions Luther could choose to take, instead of following wind-up toy soldier orders. He looked at Diego and saw someone familiar but new at the same time. If he’d watched that first transmission through to the end, Luther might have realized how worried his brother actually was for him. For all of them. Huh. It was possible Luther had never been as alone as he thought. Even now, even after Allison learned that Dad had thrown him away, and read his humiliating messages pleading to come home, he wasn’t alone. Allison was holding Luther’s changed, enormous arm, leading him back to the ship. Telling him they’d go get hotdogs and talk about everything, if he wanted... after they dropped Loki off, obviously. And maybe, possibly, got involved in some of this “Asgard” business. 

Luther _would_ watch Diego’s transmission, finally, before they got anywhere near Earth, or Asgard for that matter. He might even wind up wiping his eyes off on his gorilla-ish wrist, watching it, with Allison flying their shuttle only a few feet away... music he’d never heard on the radio and a melting look in her eyes. Glancing over her shoulder at him like they’d never said goodbye. Hello, hello, all over again. 

Diego’d be asleep, when Luther watched through his transmission — Luther would’ve timed it that way, naturally. Diego’s hand would be drooped over, brushing the shuttle floor, curled a little like he was holding a knife in his dream. Loki’d be pretending to sleep _very convincingly_ , too, around then, but truly, actually, hanging on every recorded word. Wondering about healing, vis a vis his own cracked mosaic of a family. Wondering if Thor would believe him, if he got back to Asgard and said, “I’ve come to help you out, brother.”

Luther left his smashed-up garbage ship – _Spaceboy’s_ ship, and all his sample jars, all his mission assignments – back on Sakaar. He didn’t even completely realize it, until they’d already flown through one of Sakaar’s too-many cosmic gateways. Long, long gone. 

And what next?

Yeah, what next?

We’ll just see.


End file.
